Guitarists @ Badminton Central

Ah yeah I've got a usb interface on the pc, thats better then. Still cool to be able to continue writing doodles on the go, though!

We program drums with midi with getgood drums as the midi instrument. In a full daw (like reaper or cakewalk) you can make a midi track and make the output for a simulated instrument like bass, drums, keyboard or synth or really anything. So you can program hits or notes in time, it's used a lot. I'm sure you can program simple drums in bandlab as well?

We will try a cheap electric drum kit to record midi for it, but haven't yet. (Also tried to convert a guitar hero drum kit into midi controller which was really fun but couldn't handle speedy things )

Programming drums is an art on its own, though. We had our drummer record himself playing to our track and copied it in midi, that's also a decent workflow.

I like the 'chorus' part, nice chords with some tension! Keep working at it. Bass sounds nice and compact.

GetGoodDrums just released some mixing masterclass video demonstration on youtube. Maybe you can get some ideas from it to help in your project

 

Very, very nice, congrats, and you better thank her.... a lot!!!

 

Guys,

Try Reaper. It's free for 60 days. I just did a project with it and it has everything you could possibly want. The learning curve can be steep but not if you use the free tutorials embedded on their website. I was up and recording in 2 hours. Lots of pros are switching from Pro Tools to it and it does videos. I've used Cubase, Audacity, and Cakewalk. Reaper blows them away, and is not computer intensive, takes up little space, and runs solid as a rock, Designed to run simply and on basic computers.

https://www.reaper.fm/videos.php

Also, I'm thinking of putting some of the songs from my CD on YouTube, but would love to put them here, first, for a dry-run and to get your honest critiques. I don't want to have to download Dropbox on my computer, and these threads won't take an MP3. Any ideas on how to get them here?

Thanks!

 

Mr Arc2,

First off, I feel like your question was directed at me, so I'm sorry I didn't answer you sooner. Please accept my apology for that, and I hope I'm not too late to give you my take on your situation.

It sounds like you are very comfortable with your PRS. If so, one step further you might want to consider if the neck is painted or clear-coated maple (not the fretboard), is to sand it down to bare wood. Since I discovered this simple mod, every guitar I've owned with a maple neck (about a dozen), I've done this to. You can only do it with a maple neck because the grain is so dense it won't be affected like a mahogany or other less dense wood is by humidity and temperature. The reason is because all the stickiness and gooey feel of a finished neck will disappear, and the pleasure of playing on bare wood is beyond compare for speed and feel, at least to me. To get a feel for whether you want to do it or not before you perform an almost irreversible procedure (not really, but a real pain to refinish it), find a bare baseball bat, or yard tool with a bare wood handle and slide your hand on it like a guitar neck. See what you think. One other benefit while you are sanding it down, is you can reshape the neck to exactly what you want, instead of what the factory decided for you.

As far as the amp stuff, I'm glad to hear you returned the MT15. A loud pop when engaging power is definitely NOT normal, and usually a sign something is wrong in either the preamp or power tube section of the amp, and since you had a buzz on standby (power section disengaged) I'd go with the preamp. Anyway, good decision, and don't always take the advice of someone trying to sell you something, or especially if you are concerned about something they already sold you.

A Mesa Mark V is a very good amp, really anything by Mesa-Boogie. It would be a wonderful anchor for the rest of your system to be built around. And I'd say that your amp choice is going to be the most critical piece of the chain, because every little thing you change is going to effect the overall sound in some way, so be as positive as you can that you are completely satisfied with the amp to start with. You already heard me rant about using good cables, strings and such.

If you are going to play in a cover band, which is what I have done for most of my life, you want versatility. Not only for the genre of music you are interested in now, but take into consideration that your musical tastes may change as you get older. You say you want to play mostly Rock/Metal, but what if you develop an interest in Jazz, or Blues, or Pop, but you have a dedicated Rock/Metal only rig? What if, like many musicians who just love to play as much as possible in public, you sell your soul to play only top 40 covers, a.) because that's how you get the most gigs, and b.) that's where the money is on a local level. Then you'd have to start all over and sink another small fortune into your system, or even more, and have individual rigs dedicated to each type of music. That gets very expensive, time-consuming, and can be very frustrating. But you can find a Mesa in every genre of music I've mentioned so far, as well as in Country, Reggae, Street, Hip-Hop, you name it. This is why amps like Fender are so popular, because they can cover any style of music.

So you've picked out your base amp. "Those people" who told you the multi-effects pedalboards don't have the right feel said so because they are digital, whereas the pedals your friends use are analog. Digital devices generate odd harmonics, analog devices generate even harmonics, the same type you get from tubes. Even harmonics give you that warm, buttery sound that doesn't grate on your ears like digital odd harmonics can. That's why we've been talking about introducing a tube at the last point into a digital signal path. The best, cleanest, warm, buttery, sweet, smooth and all the other adjective words for a great sound, is a good guitar straight into a good tube amp, period. But now we all want to add a little something, albeit chorus, flange, reverb, echo, whatever, so how are you going to do it with the least degradation of the the pure sound straight into the amp? You've boiled it down to the two main choices.

Pt. 2 Below.

 

I used analog pedals starting back in the 1960's, a Fuzz Face and a Vox wah into a Marshall stack ala Jimi Hendrix. There was no such thing as digital anything back then. Then came solid state amps that sounded crappy compared to tubes, until much later generations. One of the big snafus back then is that bands like The Beatles and Creedence Clearwater Revival, using Vox and Kustom amps respectively, helped sell tons of those amps in the USA, but ours didn't sound like theirs, because they were using tube amps, and all of the ones sold in the USA were solid state! Talk about some hacked off people, including me with some Kustoms. That made us all bone up on electronics. When digital came along, we all saw the benefits of it, but good God it sounded terrible at first. Think about how the sound is manipulated through these devices. A digital device uses converters to change your guitar signal into a binary bit-code that goes through software that further manipulates it to add or subtract coded effects, eq, volume, etc, then spits it out through another converter that tries to emulate the analog signal that you sent to it in the first place. A true analog signal path never changes the basic nature of the signal, leaving it analog, but does manipulate it through transistors, diodes, capacitors and other goodies, things normally found in a tube amp anyway.


Having said that, I have used digital multi-effects processors like the Line 6 Studio Pro rack mount through a good tube amp with great success. That tube amp makes all the difference. Plus, with a good amp you can choose to run the pedal board either as guitar > board > amp, or run your guitar straight into the amp, then run the board through the effects loop of the amp. I prefer that way because then your preamp is not effected by the digital signal from the board, and after your signal goes through the board in the loop, it is then tempered by the tubes in the power amp. With a Mark V you could do that and still use your channel switching. But I have done both, depending on the setup I needed. There is no denying that the convenience of having everything in one pedalboard, especially being able to use preset banks to switch from, say, a dry clean rhythm sound to a screaming solo sound with chorus, echo and reverb with a single button, is fantastic. Remember our premise for versatility? There is no way you could turn on and off all the individual pedals you'd have to, to get the same sound during the one-beat space of time you have to go from playing rhythm to solo and back again. Oh, and changing your volume somehow, all especially difficult if you are singing at the same time.


Needless to say, analog pedals will give you the "truest" sound if you use pedals that have a true bypass (meaning when the pedal is off, it doesn't effect your sound in any way. A lot of pedals do, and even true-bypass pedals will change it because you have introduced another "thing" into the line, adding capacitance.) One of the big advantages to using individual pedals is that you can change them out without breaking the bank. I've done this a lot, too.


Digital pedalboard development (the big leap was using 32 bit floating processing) has progressed now to the point that even many guitar players would find it difficult to tell the difference from analog in a blind test. For decades I've played in some of the biggest name bands in my region, and I've used both types of setups. Personally, yeah, the analog stuff sounds better, but realistically, especially with the current level of technology, not a single person in any audience you play for will know the difference. Audiences listen to the singer, not the guitar player. So the bottom line is, who do you want to please? The answer has to be, yourself. If you are not getting the sounds you like, you are not going to play as well as you can. But also, if you are stumbling around on stage trying to stomp a bunch of pedals when you could have hit 1 pre-programmed switch, you won't be happy. You CAN get digital to sound good, and analogue pedals can do it too. As you said yourself, only you can decide.


One quick story at the risk of boring you to death (did I already do that? Sorry!) One night my band Druid was the opening act to be followed by Cactus and Bob Seger in a 7,000 seat, packed auditorium. Cactus missed their flight and called in to cancel right when we were ending our set. In the middle of a song, the producer motioned me over to the side of the stage, behind the curtain, and told me "Cactus isn't coming, you need to play another hour." The problem was, we were out of songs we prepared for that night! We decided to start jamming like we did in my band practice bedroom, and went into individual solos. I started mine. I was using a Les Paul with the Fuzz Face/Vox wah setup straight into a 100 Marshall 8x12 stack (this was the early 70's) cranked wide open on both channels. About half-way in, I was overcome with this fabulous feeling because my sound was just incredible. Notes were just melting off the fretboard, sustaining forever, like they were alive, and hearing it all with the natural echo off the walls of this huge auditorium just pushed me into another level . The room, the stage, the people, just disappeared, and I started playing as though I were at home sitting on the floor in my pajamas with nobody listening but me and God. You know how when you are really into it you just disappear into your own head? That's what happened, because of the sound. After one little passage the crowd started spontaneously clapping, and realizing I was connecting with them, which pushed everything a notch higher. "Floating on clouds" is just an expression, but I've been there, it can happen. I really don't remember what I played, but suddenly came out of this daze and realized I'd been playing a really long time! I felt embarrassed and quickly ended it, but the crowd applauded enthusiastically, so I guess it was okay. The point here is, sometimes magic happens, and if you set it up right, it will happen to you.


Enjoy, and May Your Decisions be Wise!


Scrench

 

One more vote for Reaper here, it's amazing and affordable. Funny story, didn't know those Llama-kickers made this beautiful piece of software. Although, their UI skills may have given them away. It looks cluttered at times (like most DAW's, tbh), they could learn something from Studio One.

I can add some publishing experience here from my band (see links in previous post).

Bandcamp is great, has good features and easy to publish and share. But has a really specific audience (people who are in to independent music). Only meant for final versions and publishing. People can stream for free a while (counter in a cookie or something) and choose to buy and stream unlimited or download in various formats (inc flac) for a price you set (can be something like a "$1 or more" price as well). You can also make free download codes for distributing to friends, reviewers or radio's or whatever. No charge, just a small cut of sales price, I believe (haven't checked in a while).

For everything else we publish through distrokid.com, there is no comparable alternative. Easy to set up, costs $20 a year (I think they don't take a cut of your platform-income), publish to Spotify, Google Music (now YT music?), and many (almost all?) other online platforms. This is pretty much the only way to get onto Spotify I know without being connected to a label.

For sharing you can upload to dropbox website and provide a dropbox sharing link? It won't be embedded but people can download it or listen in their browser on the dropbox website. Google Drive also works. Box also works. Whatever you have. Even soundcloud could work.

 

Thanks for those suggestions, guys. I'm taking a hard look at distrokid.com since it could be a one-stop-shopping kind of deal to put my music out there, while having any copying done tracked and renumerated for, if I understand it correctly.

 

We are working on the second EP, which does have vocals, and sounds a lot clearer with more definition, in my opinion. We are still in the works of recording and writing vocals.

You are welcome to mess around with the tracks for private fun of course, but do not publish, as those rights are with us. Be sure to send me some tracks if you decide to have some fun with it. If it fits, who knows, maybe we'll work together on something in the future.

Funny album cover! Let's hear it!

 

Hey, you switched to GGD! Nice, huh?!

You added some nice flairs in the song since I last heard!

All those amp sims sound tasty, just can't choose!

Some other gems:
GGD has One Kit Wonder drum sets that are pre-mixed so you won't have to do too much to it. Handy for when you don't want to spend the time to (learn to and) mix it yourself. Also cheaper than the regular bigger drum kits.
GGD also has the zilla cab studio, which has insane quality and customisation. Also pretty affordable. Don't underestimate how much of a difference the cab and mics make!
GGD also have drum grooves, here's a free one (the others are 12.50 now): https://www.getgooddrums.com/products/free-grooves-vol-1?variant=32081580294246